Is SEO Worth It in 2024?

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. However, achieving consistently good results over a period, especially an 18-year period, does demonstrate a measure of competence and confidence that similar results may be achieved in the future. At Zelst, when we talk to clients and prospective clients about a strategy that we have developed and outline what we expect to achieve for them, we prefer that our projections are based on something tangible, like what we have achieved in the past, rather than what we vaguely hope for.

At Zelst, we monitor virtually everything we do so that we can see what works and what doesn’t. That is the basis of Optimization. In addition to providing our clients with detailed information on the performance of their online channels and presence and the value that is being created, we also carefully monitor our own performance in achieving our clients’ objectives and the value that we deliver.

OK, so time for a personal confession!. We like to prepare our results for the calendar year in January and then write a post about it. This year, our first quarter was so busy that we just did not have the chance to do this. As it was heading towards the middle of April before we were able to get around to this, we thought it best to report on the latest data, so we have compiled the stats based on the 12 months to 31 March.

As well as the UK being in recession and the US economy being much more challenging, the year to 31^st March 2024 contained no less than five major Google Core Updates, the latter of which promised to remove 40% of all content in Google's index, all of which had serious implications for many sites and caused serious losses of search visibility, traffic and business.

So, with that in mind, and although we are looking at the year to the of March 2024 purely by accident, it’s actually quite a good test of the resilience, sustainability and, dare I say, quality of our SEO strategies, as you can consider a good test of an SEO to be whether they can produce results in good times and bad times, and if they can do this consistently, rather than just when the wind is in the right direction.

Major updates, such as we’ve had, also tend to negatively affect those Black Hat, or even slightly grey, strategies, where SEOs try to ‘game’ the system or gain a short-term advantage over other sites.

Now, let’s cut to the chase and find out what we achieved through all of this adversity.

The measure of Search Visibility we use is based on click-through rate (CTR) and demonstrates a website’s progress in Google’s top 100 rankings for the keywords we are targeting and tracking in each client campaign. A zero-percent visibility means that the domain isn’t ranking in Google’s top 100 results for any of its tracked keywords; whilst a 100-percent visibility score means that the site holds first position in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for all of its target keywords.

Because each of our clients has different objectives and their campaigns are at different stages of maturity (New clients tend to be either starting from a very low point, having lost visibility or are just starting out with a brand-new site, whilst longer-term clients may have long established campaigns with high visibility), rather than using an average Search Visibility Score, which really wouldn’t mean much, we look at the average rate of improvement across all accounts. This balances more mature accounts who have lower growth rates (if most of your keywords are in top 3 positions, the rate of increase will naturally be lower), with new clients, where growth tends to be more rapid, although in these figures we also have a number of very new accounts, where the rate of increase is static or, even, still in decline.

In 2023/24 we achieved an average increase in Search Visibility of no less that 879.97%, yes, nearly eight hundred and eighty percent. That is a spectacular increase, especially in light of the volatility of SERPs over the year due to the updates

In a similar way, we look at the rate of increase in Organic Search Traffic across all of our clients, in that it includes a mix of new and more mature clients.

Changes in Search Visibility will tend to impact traffic in the future, while actual traffic is a more solid measure of what is happening right now. Increases in business will tend to follow increases in traffic.

During the economically challenging and volatile Search environment of 2023/24 we achieved an average increase in Organic Search of 287.4%, which is pretty good growth for most people. Because of the increase in search visibility, we're also pretty confident for this coming year.

Whilst Search Visibility looks at Click Through Rate and favours the top three positions in a SERP (as you can see from the following graph from Advance Web Ranking, Position #1 has a CTR more than two and a half times higher than position #2, over four times position #3 and over twenty-eight times position #10), increases in average position look at how well we are doing increasing all of our client's rankings (in most cases we are looking to achieve top 3 rankings for all of our client's target keywords).

In the year ending March 24, we increased our client’s average positions by 40.64%. The caveat with this is that if all of your client’s keywords rank #1, the rate of increase tends to be quite low!

As we’ve just said, our aim is to put our clients content first and foremost in their audience’s mind and that means making sure that they rank, ideally, number one, but certainly in the top 3 positions for each and every keyword that they target. Consequently, the increase in top three positions is very important.

Over the last twelve months, we’ve seen a massive 246.43% increase in top 3 positions, multiplying our clients’ visibility massively.

Whilst our primary objective is to rank all our clients’ target terms in the top 3, the next best thing is page 1 (top 10), as this, naturally, provides better visibility than page 2 and, more importantly, top 10 rankings are the gateway to top 3 positions, just as top 20 rankings are the ‘gateway drug’ to top 10 rankings, and so on.

Over the past year, we’ve achieved another awesome 171.47% increase in Top 10 Keyword Positions.

We also closely monitor our PPC Metrics and KPI’s to ensure that we are getting the most from our clients’ budgets, maximising their exposure to their target audience at every key moment, meeting objectives and achieving an optimum return on their investment.

Just like with SEO, many of the PPC metrics are very dependent upon the client’s objectives and the maturity of the client account (typically, we see massive improvements once we take on and properly optimise an account, whereas a more mature account will often see smaller improvements, as we continually tweak and optimise a well-run account for peak performance). If a client is looking to grow its visibility and/or grow sales, or if it looking for higher value sales/orders, or wants to promote an entirely new product/service or range, they often need to bid much for keyword clicks, and expect a lower conversion rate; the CPC will tend to be higher, the ROAS and CPA lower. If a client is looking to maximise profitability, however, we will see much better (in our opinion) KPI’s.

So, with that caveat, here are four metrics that we have reported across our range of clients, all in different growth stages and all with different objectives.

Click through rate (CTR) is an often-overlooked metric but is hugely important in measuring quality score, which affects both visibility/ranking terms and the cost per click paid. Many people used to think that getting a lot of impressions and very few clicks, hence low CTR, was actually a good thing; after all you’re getting all this advertising for your brand for free; however, Google sees that more relevant ads, which people engage with and click through to, not only improve the search experience but lead to more clicks (and revenue for them).

Improving the relevancy and quality of ads leads not only to a better brand perception and engagement but a higher CTR, higher quality score, better rankings and lower CPC. In the last 12 months, we have achieved an Average Improvement in Click Through Rate of 24.28%

Conversions are generally the most important metric in any search advertising. Ultimately, you are generally advertising because you want your audience to do something, be it buy your product or service, complete an enquiry, download an item, call your sales team or whatever. These things will be measured as conversions.

We believe improving conversions is key to the performance of every Ad campaign, so we have made improvement in conversions a key metric. Over the past 12 months, we achieved an Average Improvement in Conversions of 175.42% for our clients.

For ecommerce businesses, conversion value is, naturally, a key metric and average conversion value looks at the value of each order. Ideally, this should increase, making each of your sales more valuable, but this is highly dependent on business strategy and product mix, as the business might decide to focus on volume or switch to selling items with a lower selling price.

This has affected our metric, as two clients had a major change in strategy, meaning our Average Improvement in Conversion Value for clients was only 7.19% in the last 12 months.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is an important metric for all eCommerce businesses as it measures how much each dollar or pound is generating in revenue. A ROAS of 500% would mean that every dollar or pound spent on ads would deliver five dollars or five pounds of sales.

ROAS is extremely dependent upon business strategy, pricing, competition, profit margins and a number of other factors. In some markets, just a positive ROAS is considered good, whereas in others, a good ROAS is in three figures.

Across our range of eCommerce clients, we achieved an Average return on Ad Spend (ROAS) of 895% over the last twelve months.

In addition to the actual ROAS number, it’s also useful to look at the average improvement in this, although, again, this is heavily dependent upon strategy and markets.

Over the past twelve months, we achieved an Average Improvement in ROAS of 15.69% for our clients.

Here’s a table with all of our metrics:-

If your business would benefit from this sort of performance, please call us now or complete this form.